Inauguration Day is Here: How to Survive the Trump Presidency With Your Sanity Intact

It’s finally here: the beginning of the end.

How’re you doing? Are you tired? I’m exhausted, and we’re just getting started.

As we prepare for the months and years ahead, I can’t help but think about the ways we’ve been forced to recalibrate our definition of normal — that in order to cope with the unveiling of America’s ugliest features, we have crafted new words for the same old hate we’ve been dealing with since what feels like time immemorial. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia are all given new names under the “alt-right.” Hate gets dressed up in fancy new terms like “preserving family values” and “protecting our borders.”

Vox reporter Matthew Yglesias has written about how we should handle the normalization of Trump, and the conclusion is to just let it happen. Populism feeds on the “circus-like atmosphere” created by media and pundits focused on Trump’s outlandish behavior. Yglesias argues we need to get American politics out of “reality show mode.”

Resistance is not a sprint, it’s an endurance test. It’s going to be a long, aggravating four (possibly eight) years, and if we get hung up on every tweet, every outrageous thing that draws attention away from what’s actually happening in Washington, we are going to not only burn ourselves out, we’ll continue to lose.

In the spirit of returning to normal, here are some things you can do to make it through the next four years without completely losing it:

Stay educated

After all, knowledge is power. The Indivisible Guide was created by a group of former congressional staffers who watched the Tea Party’s rise to power. They’ve compiled their collective knowledge about the way Washington operates into an extensive guide to replicating the Tea Party’s success.

DeRay McKesson and activists from Campaign ZERO recently re-released their Resistance Manual, an open source wiki for all things resisting Trump and the GOP agenda.

Pay attention, but limit your exposure

There’s so much happening all the time that it’s really easy to get caught in the cycle of outrage and never get anything done. You don’t have to know chapter and verse on everything happening in Washington, but you should stay informed enough to know when it’s time to call your senator or write a strongly-worded letter to your city council.

Unfollow pages on Facebook. You don’t need to see the same four stories re-imagined by every online publication that covers that topic.

Maybe reconsider using your clock radio as an alarm, unless your morning wake-up with NPR is your main news intake for the day. Even then, I’d suggest waiting until you’ve made coffee to turn on Morning Edition.

Wrap your community around you like a blanket

The lead-up to Saturday’s Women’s Marches has been a reminder of the healing power of community. Knowing that your friends and neighbors have your back is incredibly affirming. This week my Facebook feed has been full of people preparing to march, making signs and pussyhats, posting helpful tips, and offering words of encouragement and support to one another. I can’t wait to see what happens when we take this offline and see each other in real life.

Practice proper self-care

Though the concept has been warped slightly by popular culture and the influence of capitalism, acts of self-care are vital to dealing with stress and maintaining your overall well-being. Typically, I find the simpler the self-care activity, the better it works. Find what self-care means to you and do it, whether that’s taking time away for yourself or getting out into the community for some human interaction to lift your spirit. Today at Wicked Grounds Cafe in San Francisco, the shop is “closed” for the general strike, but it will keep its doors open for anyone who needs a safe space. Nothing is for sale, but support coffee and teas will be available as long as supplies last. (h/t to our friends at Broke-Ass Stuart for gathering a list of safe spaces on Inauguration Day).

The Emperor Has No Balls: Remember when this happened? Anarchist collective INDECLINE created five statues depicting Donald Trump in the nude and placed them in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle in August 2016. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Get Creative

Art is, and has always been, a method of resistance. Art is a catharsis, a safe space, a port in the storm when everything else is going under. I hope that it continues to be enough to keep us afloat in the times ahead.

When in doubt, dance. As Michael Navotny once said on Queer as Folk, “so the thumpa-thumpa continues. It always will, no matter what happens, no matter who’s President. As Our Lady of Disco, the Divine Miss Gloria Gaynor, has always sung to us, ‘We will survive.’” (Sorry if I made you cry just then)

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